SAN BERNARDINO – Several times a month, San Bernardino High principal Sandra Rodriguez gets behind the wheel of her black SUV and drives the streets of the neighborhoods near her school.

On each trip, she visits the homes of students who have been absent from school in an attempt to get them back in class and on the road to graduation.

The principal is a firm believer that the visits have a much greater impact on everything from poor attendance to better test scores and the drop out and graduation rates. To her, it beats sitting at her desk sifting through data.

“There’s a mentality out there that this school is bad,” she said. “So I feel that even if I don’t make contact with the parents, the neighbors can see the principal with all my responsibilities is out there doing this.”

Rodriguez started making the home visits in 2004 when she was a vice principal at the school.

Back then her focus was getting students back in school to take all-important tests.

“We need them to come in for the exams because there are such high stakes,” she said.

She has kept it up as principal, in large part because the average monthly attendance at the high school is 89 percent – it should be in the 90s.

San Bernardino High is also in program improvement status, the designation for schools and districts that fail to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years.

Most recently, Rodriguez knocked on doors to make sure absentee 10th graders showed up to take the California High School Exit Exam, CAHSEE, in March.

Thanks to that effort, 34 students out of 40 who had been missing school took the test.

This week, Rodriguez and others, including counselors and the school’s probation officer, focused on reaching out to students in the intervention program, I PASS Prep, In Pursuit of Advancement for Student Success.

As of the 2007-08 school year, the graduation rate at the high school was 67 percent. The program helps students get enough credits to graduate.

On Wednesday, Rodriguez donned her letterman jacket and joined Jamie Rios, bilingual school outreach coordinator, in visiting three homes near the school to talk to students who have been absent from the intervention program.

“This is our safety net,” she said. “We need to get to them and their parents before they drop out.”

At the first home, the principal was greeted at the door by 17-year-old student Saul Jahen.

Once she was invited in, she had to explain that she was the principal to Saul’s father, Juan Jahen.

Looking concerned, Jahen told her his son wasn’t coming to first period or school at all because he had problems getting up early.

Jahen said he would like to help more but is battling health problems, including sleep apnea.

As a solution, Rodriguez told Saul he could attend second through seventh period.

The principal even gave him a ride to school, only a few blocks from his home.

“This opened my eyes and showed me a lot, that I need to get it straight and come to school,” said Saul of the visit.

Saul’s situation is one of many the principal encounters. Often students are long gone or homeless and living with their families at the city’s emergency shelters.

Ill parents, finding childcare and having to work to support the family also figure into the equation.

On the second stop of the day, a 16-year-old student mother and her baby were not there.

The same was true of the last visit.

Herlennon Contreras, the 18-year-old student Rodriguez was looking for, was nowhere to be found.

“I don’t know where my brother is,” said Allen Contreras, 16, as he stood talking to the principal outside a gate.

Allen, who currently attends a charter school but may return to San Bernardino High, still appreciated the visit.

“A lot of people don’t graduate and she is making sure we do and do something with our lives,” he said.